We got this question last week, that sparked some wonderful debate in the Quantum lean community. “What percentage of time should I spend on the process V.S. the people”. All too often people are looking for a black and white formula to apply to a problem, and it’s seldom the case, particularly when it comes […]

Here are 3 words you probably haven’t heard, but are critical to your Lean journey. YOKOTEN HANSEI HEIJUNKA Like many lean terms we commonly use, they originate in Japan, and we continue to use the Japanese term here. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure why, but it does make it a little more interesting […]

It’s pretty unlikely you just woke up in the morning and decided hey I’m gonna take my company on this lean adventure, I should tell everyone today. Probably you read a bunch of books, mentioned it to your leadership team and spoke to a few key employees. Then undoubtedly that disseminates through the ranks and […]

Lean at its core could be summed up as continuous improvement through the elimination of waste. So we wage war against waste trying to identify it and eliminate it. Some of it’s easy to see and get rid of or at least reduce, and typically team members can be doing that on the shop floor […]

Since it’s in the best interest of every business to improve, I’d be willing to bet whether you state the claim “we are on a lean journey” or you just wake up every day trying to make your business better, there is likely a flurry of activity with people making improvements on the shop floor, […]

So you have officially declared “we are a lean company”.  In a nutshell, this means that you have set your business off in the direction of continuous improvement through the elimination of waste. In the beginning this is quite easy to do, there are labels to be printed, old messes to get cleaned up, shadow […]

If you’re the owner of a manufacturing business. You have probably been the last one out of the shop and as you’re turning off the lights and shutting everything down, you see your finished product sitting by the shipping door. You look at it and think to yourself, “it’s five pieces of wood put together […]

At the heart of lean manufacturing, it’s all about eliminating waste through continuous improvement. So this means we should be looking at every single process, every single day with an eye for making it better. A great guideline is to work towards making everything easier, better, faster, cheaper. And in that order. But there is […]

I would be willing to bet if I asked you to head into the shop on a Saturday afternoon and build me one or two of the things your factory produces whether it be cabinets, furniture, or custom millwork, what you make doesn’t really matter.  And probably just the thought of going in with no […]

We all know how critical it is to understand the eight deadly wastes of manufacturing. They are: Transportation Inventory Motion Waiting Overprocessing Overproduction Defects Unused employee creativity In a nut shell, all the bad things that happen in our factories fall into one of these categories. Believe it or not, all eight of these are […]